Kaizer Chiefs went on the rampage and blasted Bloemfontein Celtic 4-0 in a Premier soccer League game played at Absa Stadium in Durban on Saturday night. Chiefs led 2-0 at the interval. Chiefs, under the guidance of Kostadin Papic and Johannes Mofokeng for the first time, started attacking from the first whistle.
The Sharks continued their impressive form in the Super 14 and maintained their unbeaten status with a hard-fought but deserved 30-14 win over the Cheetahs in Bloemfontein on Saturday. The Sharks trailed 13-14 at the break, but were more purposeful in the second half, scoring two of their tree tries in this period.
The first farmland-expropriation exercise by the government, to be effective on March 15, was overshadowed by ”outstanding issues” among claimants of the Pniel farm in the Northern Cape. The land will now first be kept in curatorship by the state before it will be handed to the claimants, the Commission on Restitution of Land Rights said on Saturday.
An anti-crime petition with an estimated 200 000 signatures and a memorandum demanding a crime-free and corruption-free South Africa were handed to officials by marchers in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban on Saturday. ”We will use every avenue … to ensure that people’s rights are no longer violated,” said Shane Pillay, national coordinator of the South Africans against Crime campaign.
South Africa still has a long way to go to throw off its ”ethnic blinkers”, Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon said, referring to his party’s leadership race. ”We are still held back by the prejudices and wrong-headed decisions of the past,” Leon told the party’s Gauteng congress at the Benoni High School on the East Rand.
Two security guards were seriously injured when a group of nine armed men assaulted them with hammers and took money from their cash van in Olifantsfontein, East Rand police said on Saturday. Spokesperson Captain Jethro Mtshali said the men allegedly approached the SBV van at a stop street at 8am on Saturday, held the guards at gun point and assaulted them with hammers.
An anti-crime petition demanding a crime-free and corruption-free South Africa with an estimated 70 000 signatures was handed to Johannesburg mayor Amos Masondo’s office on Saturday. The grou Vicptims in the Republic of South Africa marched from the Johannesburg CBD to Masondo’s office where they handed a memorandum and petition to a mayoral official.
The Safety and Security Ministry has spent more than R100-million for private security to patrol premises of the South African Police Services in 2005 and 2006, the Saturday Star newspaper reported on Saturday. In a written response to Democratic Alliance MP Donald Lee, Minister Charles Nqakula said this was done so as to make it possible for police to fight and prevent crime.
Don’t think of becoming a soccer coach if you are looking for job security. The sacking on Friday of Wits University coach Boebie Solomons is confirmation enough, with former Bafana Bafana player and assistant coach Eric Tinkler hoisted into the hot seat for Sunday’s game against Moroka Swallows.
Trust in police in Africa’s economic powerhouse is near the lowest on the continent, a researcher said on Friday. Experts at a seminar on crime and public perception said the lack of trust resulted from a failure of leadership and communication in the police force, coupled with a spike in some crimes last year — despite overall decreases.
The South African government was set on Saturday to take possession of the first farm to be expropriated in a move designed to silence criticism that it is dragging its feet over land reform. Land commission agents, along with chief claims commissioner Thozi Gwanya, will descend on Pniel Farm near the diamond mining town of Kimberley to meet with the outgoing owners.
Trade and Industry Minister Mandisi Mpahlwa will re-examine the shareholder interests of all four bidders who applied to run the National Lottery, he said in a statement on Friday. The decision follows a Pretoria High Court ruling setting aside Mpahlwa’s decision to award the lottery licence to preferred bidder, Gidani.
President Thabo Mbeki on Friday mooted the possibility of amending the South African and African National Congress constitutions to provide for better gender equality. He said the party’s decision after the 2006 local government elections that its elected municipal council representatives will be constituted on the basis of gender equality had been eminently correct.
In the 1980s every young pilot’s dream was to be Tom Cruise’s character, Maverick, in the film Top Gun. But this is not so anymore, the South African Air Force said on Friday. ”Their role model is no longer the guy … with the big watch and sunglasses; it is a four-bar [commercial airline] captain who is driving a big car,” said Major General Des Barker.
The Health Department plans to reduce the rate of new HIV/Aids infections by 50% by the year 2011, acting health minister Jeff Radebe said on Friday. ”To achieve this, we need to intensify the implementation of prevention interventions aimed at changing behaviour and reduce sexual transmission,” Radebe said.
On the mend at the Milpark Hospital, Sunday Times columnist David Bullard still has ”great faith in the future of South Africa” after being shot in an armed robbery. ”I am unwilling to be beat down,” Bullard said on Friday.
Several hundred protesters dressed in pink tops and jeans in sympathy with the family of murdered seven-year-old Sheldean Human dispersed peacefully from outside the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court on Friday. Earlier in the day, the case of the man suspected of murdering the girl was postponed in the court.
A wave of attacks on cash machines by gangs armed with dynamite has struck further fear into South Africans already dealing with sky-high crime rates, authorities said on Friday. Robbers who blew their way into an Absa ATM in the latest attack on Thursday near Johannesburg made off with thousands of rands in the 69th such raid on ATMs this year.
A vicious circle of poverty and disease is placing a huge burden on development in Africa, the African Union commissioner for social affairs said on Friday. Bience Gawanas was speaking at a meeting of the national health council in Sandton. She said a vicious circle existed in which poverty drove up the burden of diseases while ill-health contributed to poverty.
Video footage showing South Africa’s best-loved rugby players naked, tired, scared and embarrassed violates their right to privacy and dignity and is not for public viewing, the Pretoria High Court ruled on Friday. Judge Pierre Rabie interdicted the organisers of the infamous 2003 Springbok boot camp, Kamp Staaldraad, from publishing or distributing a DVD about the camp.
The seemingly all-embracing power of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) needs to be tempered by a strong alternative to ensure that South Africa’s democracy ”is strengthened and protected”, says official opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Tony Leon.
Sunday Times journalist David Bullard is ”doing very well” and may be moved out of the Milpark Hospital’s intensive-care unit, a hospital spokesperson said on Friday. ”He is doing very well and we are hoping to move him out of intensive care later today,” said Amelda Swartz.
The Italian owners of two granite firms are suing South Africa for â,¬266-million (about R2,5-billion), arguing that laws which force firms to sell stakes to black investors violated international investment treaties, the investors’ lawyer said on Friday. The action marks the first legal action alleging that South Africa’s mining charter amounts to expropriation.
Opposition parties have vented their anger at the Correctional Services department’s scathing attack on the National Assembly’s correctional services committee. The committee this week rejected the department’s report on Annanias Mathe’s escape from Pretoria’s C-Max prison.
They say that when Zimbabwe sneezes, the whole region gets a cold. While observers were talking up the imminence of regime change in Harare, the country continued to haemorrhage economic migrants to neighbouring countries. The respected International Crisis Group think thank speculated that divisions with Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF over the 83-year-old leader’s bid to extend his term for a further two years represent ”a realistic chance” for change.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions on Thursday joined the South African Communist Party in condemning the ”lenient” action taken against South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) head of news Snuki Zikalala over the controversial blacklisting issue.
An estimated 4,2-million unsafe abortions are performed each year in Africa and 30 000 women die as a result, a seminar heard on Thursday. ”Tens of millions of women of reproduction age in Africa today will experience an unsafe abortion in their lifetime,” said Liz Maguire, president of Ipas — an international NGO that promotes women’s health.
Unanswered questions remain following the brouhaha after the <i>Sunday Times</i> again found that banned industrial chemical dyes in certain chilli condiments.
The Cape Town city council on Thursday afternoon approved a R2,9-billion budget for its 2010 Soccer World Cup stadium at Green Point. The approval brings to an end most of the uncertainty that has surrounded the funding of the 68Â 000-seater structure, destined to host a semifinal.
President Thabo Mbeki on Thursday officially welcomed five diplomats appointed to represent their respective countries in South Africa. The diplomats are from the republics of India, Seychelles and Suriname, the Kingdom of Denmark and the Sultanate of Oman.
The Constitution Court on Thursday declared unconstitutional certain sections of the Criminal Procedure Act governing the rights of convicts to appeal against their convictions and sentences. The matter arose from two cases and related to Section 309 of the 1977 Act.
Western Cape provincial minister of education Cameron Dugmore was discussing projects when he visited the school where former African National Congress chief whip Tony Yengeni is doing his community service, his office said on Thursday. Yengeni is working at the Siyazama school for mentally challenged children in Guguletu.